Climate Science for Australia's Future

The following points must be considered when using Canute - the sea-level rise decision-support tool.

Caveats

The storm-tide data used in this analysis was provided by numerical modelling performed by the University of Western Australia. The simulations were adjusted to provide consistency with observations from 29 tide-gauges provided by the Australian National Tidal Centre. The modelled results and observations have been validated to yield data which is of the best quality that is practically achievable at this time, although some unresolved errors may remain.

The IPCC projections of sea-level rise used in these calculations involve considerable uncertainty, arising from imperfect understanding both of the science and of the world's future emissions.

These results relate to the increase in the probability and frequency of extreme events caused by a rise in mean sea level; they do not make any projections based on changes about the mean.

These results do not include effects of wave runup. They also only include the effect of wave setup to the extent by which it affected the tide-gauge observations that were used to adjust the results of the storm-tide modelling.

The methods used to derive the future estimates of likelihood have been formally peer-reviewed by the science community and published in the journal, Climatic Change (Hunter, J., 2010, Estimating Sea-Level Extremes Under Conditions of Uncertain Sea-Level Rise, Climatic Change, 99:331-350,DOI:10.1007/ s10584-009-9671-6 and Hunter, J., 2011, A Simple Technique for Objectively Estimating an Allowance for Uncertain Sea-Level Rise, Climatic Change, .....). For copies, see Publications.

The Climate Change Adaptation Program - An Australian Government initiative